Permanent residents

"Once you’ve arrived inside Gryffindor Tower, come inside and be welcomed by the roaring fire, stuffed armchairs, and the great view we have from our windows. Our dormitories are reached by climbing the winding mahogany staircase, decorated with crimson and gold. As I said, there's plenty of gold around the tower. Our four-posters are covered with thick scarlet blankets (we have quite windy nights up in the towers) and are embroidered with gold. Gold chandeliers cast warm glows all around."

Gryffindor Tower, also known as the Gryffindor Common Room,[1] serves as the living quarters for students in Gryffindor House at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. In general, it sports several shades of red and gold. The fireplace mantle is adorned with a portrait of a lion (associated with the house).

Contents

Entrance

Gryffindor corridor and the Fat Lady's portrait

The entrance to the Gryffindor common room is concealed under the portrait of the Fat Lady, on the lavish Gryffindor Landing. To enter one must present the Fat Lady with the correct password of the week, otherwise said student will have to wait the day for another student to come by and pass them the code. Other houses have security arrangements and concealed ways, such as the Hufflepuff barrels, the concealed Slytherin door, and the Ravenclaw questions.[2]

Common Room

"...the portrait swung forward to reveal a round hole in the wall. They all scrambled through it — and found themselves in the Gryffindor common room, a cosy, round room full of squashy armchairs."

The common room is a circular room where Gryffindor students can relax after a long day of studying. It is full of squashy armchairs, tables, and a bulletin board where school notices, ads, lost posters, etc. can be posted. The common room is decorated in several shades of red, which is associated with the house. The common room is comfortable, but not more comfortable then the Hufflepuff basement.[3] There are many windows that look out onto the grounds of the school, and a large fireplace dominates one wall. The mantle of the fireplace is adorned with a portrait of a lion.[4] The walls are decorated with scarlet tapestries that depict witches and wizards, but also various animals. There are also bookcases located in the room, filled with verious novels.[5]

Dormitories

Gryffindor boys dormitory

The Gryffindor dormitories are also located in the Tower, with two doors leading off from the common room that open to spiral staircases. One of them leads to the girls' dormitory, the other to the boys'. It can be assumed that both dormitories are identical to each other, with the same four-poster beds and hangings.

The stairs to the girls' dormitory are enchanted to become a slide if any boy attempts to climb them, but not vice versa, since it was deemed that girls were more trustworthy than boys. Hermione Granger went into the boys' room on several occasions.

In the films

The Gryffindor Common Room as seen in the films differs slightly from its description in the books in that it is not a perfect circle, and that both the boys' and girls' dormitories are accessed via the same staircase: boys on the left, girls on the right.

The charm used to make the Girls' Dormitory stairs into a slide may be the Glisseo charm. It is never stated if similar enchantments are placed on the entrances to the Girls' Domitories in other houses, but is highly likely, as Hermione identifies the Founders collectively as the ones responsible for the charm.

In the PS2 video game adaptation of Chamber of Secrets, after going through the portrait-hole, there is a short stone hallway leading to the actual common room. This hallway also leads to an old room behind a tapestry, a quiet study area for Gryffindor students, frequently used by Percy, and a secret bathroom used by Fred and George Weasley as an in-school joke shop.

The Chamber of Secrets video game is also the only place in the games or the films where the common room is accessed by crawling through an actual hole (albeit a square-shaped one). All other adaptations depict a doorway.

The common room as depicted in the video game adaptations of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is a near-perfect replica of the common room as seen in the films. One very subtle difference is that in the video games the stairs leading to the dormitories only go up, creating the misconception that there's only one dorm room for the boys (shared by Harry and the other boys in his year) and one for the girls. In the films (although it is difficult to notice unless you pay attention) you can see that, in addition to going up, the stairs also lead down (presumably to more dormitories). In the books it is stated that Harry's dorm is located at the top of the stairs.